David Jones y Crydd (shoemaker) had the building at the back of the Post Office on Station Road and during the First World War, the old stagers used to meet and there were quite a lot of sailors amongst them.
They had the newspapers in the morning with the news from France, which was sometimes good and at other times, bad. When the news was good, old Morgan Jones who lived in Ty ar y Graig, used to walk through the village to the Old Post Office to give them the good news and you could hear him singing early in the morning as he went along.
Old Morgan had been to America but he had a stroke that left him paralized on one side. He used to follow the threshing machines and it was amazing to watch him shovel coal with one hand. He had a brother John H. who at the time was the editor of a Welsh Paper the Brython, which was edited in Liverpool. John H had a few books published - `O'r Mwg i'r Mynydd' (From the smoke to the Mountain) and `Gwin y Gorffennol' (Yesterday's Wine) - Talsarnau was always in his mind when writing.
When you bought a pair of working boots before the war it took you days to get used to them; they were hob-nailed boots and they used goose grease to soften them as they were very hard. I very often think of the men as they walked through Blaenau in the morning and by the rocks at Bwlch y Gwynt, they were like soldiers coming and going.
Mr. and Mrs. Lloyd lived in the Ship Aground and there was a farm there as well. When the tide came over in 1927 he lost his cows in the cowshed at the back of the hotel as he would not listen to the farmers who wanted him to take the cattle across the road towards Ty Mawr. He was an old gamekeeper and very stubborn and he had brought the cows from the fields during the day. While talking about the Ship Aground, the timber that they used to build it came from an old ship wreck and they used the same timber on Noddfa according to Evan Williams who lived at the Old Post.
I should have mentioned Griffith Roberts, Y Go (the blackmith), he lived at the Smithy on the way to the station and he also kept his pony and his cows in the shed nearby. In the summer he used to carry hay from the fields near the traeth and we always played nearby so that we could have a ride in the cart. Evan his son used to carry coal.
We had another smithy as you go up the hill to Eisingrug; it was on the left hand side and there was also a mill there in the old times. Simon Hughes, who lived at Gwilym House was a postman and a tailor, so was William Williams, Ysgoldy. They called one Simon Teiliwr and the other William Williams Postman. I heard Mrs. Jones, Caerwych saying about William Williams that when he came on his rounds with the post in the morning, that if there was only a Post Card for them, he used to whistle from the bottom by Caerwych bridge and he read the post Card to her. William Williams used to say that it was the 18th of April when he first heard the cuckoo as he kept a diary.